Are you looking for ways to reduce costs in your call center while maintaining exceptional customer service? Look no further!
The number one cost driver in any call center is labor expense, and it's also the one you can best manage and control. In this post, we'll discuss the two best ways to deploy Contact Center AI to reduce staffing requirements and your cost-per-call, ensuring that for the interactions that do require a call center agent, they are handled with as few agents as possible while still providing an excellent customer experience. By automating voice interactions with natural language IVR and optimizing staffing and scheduling with improved forecasting and machine learning, you'll be able to significantly lower your call center costs while continuing to deliver top-notch service.
Automate Voice Interactions with Natural Language IVR
Automating voice interactions with natural language IVR can significantly reduce call center costs. While efforts to move customers to self-service options like a knowledge base are important, it's inevitable that some will still prefer to call in for assistance. The industry standard cost-per-call is usually around $5-$8, but by using voice automation and conversational AI, the cost of an automated voice interaction can be reduced to just 10-15% of what it would cost to have a live agent handle it.
Traditionally, Interactive Voice Response systems (IVR) have been used to handle automated voice interactions, but these systems often do not have advanced speech recognition capabilities. However, with the adoption of cloud-based telephony and the development of natural language processing technologies, it's now possible to deploy a cloud-based conversational IVR within a few days. These systems can handle a wider range of interactions and map commonly asked questions to a knowledge base, allowing them to handle a higher percentage of voice interactions and reduce the need for live agents. Additionally, on premise IVRs are also expensive and time consuming to deploy, which also limits your ability to handle call volume spikes.
If you already have an existing IVR system, a platform like Xaqt's Cognitive Voice Automation Suite can help you automate more call types and improve self-service effectiveness. In many cases, we've seen IVR success rates of around 85% on various call types using this platform.
In summary, automating voice interactions with natural language IVR can significantly reduce call center costs by handling a higher percentage of interactions and reducing the need for live agents. This can be achieved through the use of cloud-based conversational IVR systems and platforms like Xaqt's Cognitive Voice Automation Suite.
Reducing Staffing Costs with Improved Forecasting and Scheduling
While it's not possible to automate all calls and interactions, it's still important to manage staffing costs effectively. This is where improved forecasting and scheduling can make a big difference. Call center optimization and workforce management products that generate call volume forecasts with staffing requirements and agent schedules have been around for a while, but recent advancements in technology have made these solutions more automated and affordable.
By integrating new data sources and using machine learning, it's now possible to create more accurate call volume forecasts than ever before. Instead of relying on historical call volume data and rolling averages to predict future demand, you can use a call center data warehouse and data science to better understand call volume arrival patterns and demand.
With more accurate forecasting, you can prevent periods of over-staffing and under-staffing, helping you to reduce staffing requirements and cost-per-call while improving the customer experience. By optimizing your call center operations and scheduling, you can strike the right balance between cost-efficiency and providing excellent service to your customers.
How to Get Started
In conclusion, reducing costs in your call center is crucial to maintaining a profitable business while providing excellent customer service. By automating voice interactions with natural language IVR and optimizing staffing and scheduling with improved forecasting and machine learning, you can significantly lower your labor expenses and cost-per-call.
If you're interested in learning more about how Contact Center AI can benefit your business, we invite you to schedule a demo with us. Our team would be happy to show you how our solutions can help you streamline your call center operations and reduce costs. Don't wait any longer – schedule your demo today and see the difference for yourself.
